The original Zionists of the late 19th century were mostly secular people inspired by the rise of European nations on the ashes of empires. Convinced the Jews needed a state of their own as well, they settled on the Holy Land, from which Jews were expelled by the Romans two millennia ago.
In November 1917 the Zionist movement persuaded Britain - who would soon receive a League of Nations mandate to rule Palestine - to issue a declaration supporting "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Thirty years later, with British colonial rule nearing its end, the newly established United Nations voted for partition of the area into independent "Arab and Jewish States."
Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence was essentially a national statement, proclaiming that Palestine - referred to interchangeably as "the land of Israel" - was "the birthplace of the Jewish people."
Zvi Hauser, who until recently served as Netanyahu's Cabinet secretary, lamented this week that this declaration was never followed by a constitution cementing the country's status as the Jewish state.
"The Jewish people is not just a religion. It is also a national group that has a right to self-actualization," he said.
In fact, the question of what it means to be a Jew is a matter of debate - abroad and in Israel itself, where Orthodox rabbis fight to retain a monopoly over religious conversions that have the unusual corollary outcome of constituting a membership ticket to a "people" as well.
"It's hard to compare the matter to other countries because of the unique aspect of Judaism," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
"It is not just a religion or a nationality or an identity - it is all in one," said Hoenlein, who organized the conference that Netanyahu addressed.
Israel's "Law of Return" combines the lineage and religion definitions. It grants citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, as well as to converts who have no Jewish heritage but are recognized by rabbis.
Consensus on the matter is extremely hard to find.
Many Jews around the world see their identity as a primarily a matter of religion. Plenty of Israelis think that a "Jewish state" should be more of a theocracy, outlawing work on the Sabbath, for example. At the same time, many Jews in Israel and elsewhere are not at all religious and view themselves as Jewish simply because they were born to Jewish parents - a situation not unlike that of ethnic Irish or Japanese.
Most confounding, perhaps, are the ethnic divisions that persist between the Jews themselves.
Israel's founders were overwhelmingly European Jews, and that group - known as Ashkenazim - was numerically dominant among Jews before the Nazi Holocaust, diverse yet cohesive enough to lend credence to a national movement.
But the reality today in Israel is diverse. Almost half of the Jewish population of 6 million is descended from the Arab world - their background, history, and even appearance often starkly different from their European cohorts. Tensions over everything from music to food to prayer styles lurk just beneath the surface.
In this situation, it is not uncommon for Israelis to refer to each other, not always with admiration, by distant country of origin - as "Moroccans" and "Yemenites," or "Bulgarians" and even "Americans."
As they observe all this, skepticism among Palestinians - many of whose communities were displaced by the Zionist movement - seems easy to understand.
"Judaism is a religion like Islam and Christianity," said Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian legislator. "Israel is a state, a nationality that represents all the groups and ethnicities in Israel - including the Palestinians."
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Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Karin Laub in Ramallah, Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Lara Jakes in Washington and Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.
